It sometimes feels like Hollywood never really figured out how to make great pirate movies popular in modern times, outside of the one obvious mega-franchise (Pirates of the Caribbean). It's a mythos that's ripe for fun exploration, though, and it seems like Amazon's decided to go into uncharted waters for its latest action blockbuster.
Starring Priyanka Chopra and Karl Urban (both of whom have worked quite extensively with Prime Video on other projects), we got a proper trailer for The Bluff last week, and it looks like a really unique take on pirate fiction, with a little bit of fantasy thrown into the mix in the best way possible.
As well as giving us a quick look at the story that the film will tell, this full trailer confirms that The Bluff will arrive on Prime Video next week, on 25 February, meaning you only have about six weeks to wait before you can see what it's all about yourself. In the meantime, though, the clips included in the trailer give us a pretty clear idea.
Chopra stars as Ercell Bodden, a former pirate who's managed to carve out a peaceful life for herself and her daughters, far from the attentions of her former crewmates and enemies. That peace is shattered by the arrival of Urban as Captain Connor, though, who comes onto the scene looking to take his vengeance on her in the bloodiest of ways.
He's a vision of malevolence, but it looks like she has plenty of skills up her sleeve, and after a cut-throat escape she'll set off to take down the crew trying to ruin her life – in gruesome fashion at times. It seems really fun and knowing, and the comments on YouTube indicate that people are loving the idea of the movie.
The most apt, I think, comes from one viewer who wrote: "John Wick meets Pirates of the Caribbean!" That's a pretty fair read, given the action sequences we get to see and the setting of the film. Whether it can live up to those two big franchises will be clearer when the film arrives in late February, but you can at least whack it on your watchlist now that you know about it.
